Seriously Offended ... by Love

For those of us who too often place “self” at the center of our Christianity; the idea of giving it up in favor of simple, humble love … is offensive.  Now I can probably guess what you are thinking; that “I” don’t ever put “self” at the center of “my” Christianity.  No, this couldn’t apply to me.  But consider … How often might you do a “good work” because you know you “should” do a good work.  Or how often might you do a good work because your church asks you to do one.  You do these because scripture seems to demand that you do them.  You do them because scripture talks about those who do not do them as being left out of heaven itself.  And if you miss doing one of them, you suffer guilt for having passed it by, or perhaps fear that passing it by might wind up leaving you too out of heaven itself when the time comes.  Judgment looms in your mind and eats at your conscience.  For those of us who do good works because we should do them, not because we know no other way, (like having been transformed by the power of His love into the new creations that are driven to do good with no thought of it), there is a difference in motive behind our good works.  Judgment drives us into meager good works because we fear what the lack of them might do to us at the end of all things.  But Judgment is not love.

Now consider the message of our gospel.  How do we proclaim that we are saved from sin?  I believe all of us would say that Jesus died for us, and rose again for us.  Jesus then forgives us of all of our sins.  And so because of that we are all saved.  But where in this message is the idea that you might stop committing sins from which you need forgiveness.  Here is where the highway of churches under the Christian banner all diverge on the same route.  Most all of them claim the same message where it comes to getting rid of sin.  They hold you responsible for it.  In effect, the Nancy Reagan doctrine of “just say no”.  But as you have probably already experienced personally “just say no” to sin, does not work.  You are not strong enough to eradicate sin from your life.  So then most churches travel down the road of this message to a horrible conclusion.  Stating that you simply do not have to get rid of it.  God loves you even with your sin, so “just don’t worry about it”.  But that is like telling a cancer patient the same thing.  Cancer hurts, it eats you up inside.  If you have cancer, you want a cure, you want an end to the pain.  You don’t want to just sit around ignoring that you have it, while pain eats you up, getting worse and worse until you die.  No, Jesus did not come live for us, die for us, rise for us, forgive us – just to leave us living in the cancerous pain of our sins.  There is something more, something better.  But most Christian churches are not preaching a message that leads to the cure for our sins, at least to a cure that works.

The Nancy Reagan doctrine does not work at curing our sins.  Why?  Because it leaves “you” responsible for breaking the chains of “your” sins.  A lot of Christians become aware of this after all too many failures.  They fear Judgement too.  So they turn their gaze elsewhere, namely to other sinners.  They spend their Christian lives then judging and condemning others in order to avoid having to look in the mirror at the failures of their own lives.  They hope to make themselves feel better about their own Christianity given how they compare with other far more terrible sinners.  Again Judgment looms and fear with it.  Another method of tempering the Nancy Reagan doctrine of “just say no”.  Is to form a “partnership” with God.  What an insidious idea.  This idea proffers that you will do “your best”, and only after that will God pick up the slack and do the rest.  You first.  God second.  Emphasis on “you”.  But you already know your part sucks.  You fail miserably, so what slack is there for God to pick up.  Logically, all of it.  Having you as a partner in your own salvation from sins, leaves sins fully entrenched in your life.  But worse than that.  It leaves you still thinking that “you” have any part to play at all.

Whether you believe “you” are fully responsible for ending your sins, or are only in a partnership to end them, YOU are still in the center role for ending the sin in your life.  Either by what you do – enter good works here.  Or by what you demand of yourself.  In either case, Judgment looms, and fear looms with it as history records your failures one after the other until the counting is beyond measure.  This is not how the cancer of sin is cured.  This is not how the pain is lifted.  This is not how life is restored.  But almost every Christian church has some close variation of this message, and spreads it every day under the banner of the gospel.  And thus “self” is maintained at the center of our Christianity, eventually pushing Jesus out completely, or off to the side in failed partnerships that end the same way.

So what does work?  What is the message of salvation from sins that does work?  It is simple, humble love.  Not the love you create, but His love that transforms you once you are willing to let “self” go entirely from the Christianity you espouse.  You don’t “do” anything.  You cannot be a partner of any kind.  You must submit yourself to Jesus entirely.  Give over your thoughts, your desires, the core of who you are to Jesus and allow Jesus to change you entirely.  That prospect is scary.  Becoming someone else may not have been on your agenda up to now.  If I let “self” go, who will I be?  Will anyone still recognize me, will even I recognize me?  Probably not in all candor.  But that will be a wonderful improvement.  What Jesus does with your submission is life altering.  Your life.  And what Jesus introduces is life like you have never known it.  A life steadily losing the pain of the cancer of sin.  A life heading away from the direction of death.  A life filled with simple, humble love – for others.  It looks totally different.  And the journey is not without pain, but it is with steadily less pain, until pain is gone altogether in the here and now.  How long that journey takes is a function of how far you are willing to submit and be changed.

And here is where the rubber meets the road.  Most Christians want control over their own salvation.  They are more comfortable being responsible for the removal of their sins even though they fail at it, than having to give up control over to a Jesus they have only read about, but do not know personally.  Most Christians would rather keep to a spiritual routine, than risk a life where there is no routine at all, and no control of any kind.  Most Christians would prefer to fear the Judgment, than to fear being led to a destination everyday that they could not have predicted.  A destination that involves serving others in simple, humble love.  That kind of idea of simple, humble love is quite frankly … offensive.  And so it goes in modern Christianity.  The devil maintains a winning strategy started in the church nearly from its foundation.  We did not invent this phenomenon.  We merely continue it. 

Luke wrote about questioning this very idea so so long ago.  I am sure his friend Theophilus needed to hear just this same message before it could be entrenched by the church in his day.  The question was raised by John the Baptist himself as Luke records in the seventh chapter of his gospel.  He picks up the story in verse 18 saying … “And the disciples of John shewed him of all these things. [verse 19] And John calling unto him two of his disciples sent them to Jesus, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we for another? [verse 20] When the men were come unto him, they said, John Baptist hath sent us unto thee, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?”  John the Baptist was a Nazarite.  His life was full of rules and regulations.  His hair was uncut.  His diet was entirely kosher (and unusual).  His clothes were raw and hand sown.  He was poor in the measures of wealth of this world.  The practices of the traditions of his religion were something he had kept to his entire life.  It is what would frustrate him when he looked at what the Pharisees did by contrast.  They talked about what was required of their faith, but practiced almost none of it.  John was strong willed.  In all of this behavior, John thought his own salvation assured.  To top it all off, John was an evangelist preaching a never ending sermon of repentance to any who would listen.  He offered and performed the rite of baptism for any who were willing to repent.  The poor complied.  The rich, very few.  The Pharisees, almost none.  Yet Jesus did, when He had no reason to, other than a witness to us.

Living this kind of life, made John a lover of the rules.  And looking at the deeds of Jesus, John could not fully wrap his mind around them.  It was not the healings Jesus did.  It was the lack of attention Jesus seemed to pay to the rules that governed his own life.  Instead of Jesus emulating the life of John the Baptist, Jesus seemed to do as He pleased where the “rules” were concerned.  Jesus put love ahead of behavior, embedded in behavior, and Jesus served others more than He would ever allow others to serve Him.  Jesus refused to be the King that He was.  That was a weird kind of love that permeated everything, and was all too humble for a true Messiah to carry.  It led John to question, was Jesus merely a holy prophet, or could He truly be the Son of God, and still behave the way He did with so little of their traditions, and so much of this weird kind of simple, humble love for others.  So John sent two of his disciples to ask, perhaps for their own benefit as much as for his own questions about how we are saved from sin itself.

Luke continues in verse 21 saying … “And in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight. [verse 22] Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. [verse 23] And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.”  And there it is, the proclamation we almost forget in favor of the miracles Jesus enumerates just before it.  To the disciples of John, they witness for themselves what Jesus does.  The blind are given sight.  Recreated eyes from our Creator perfect as if born this way, or restored to the perfection robbed of them.  The lame walk.  New legs, or restored legs as the needs presented.  Our Creator is capable of creating or re-creating legs to facilitate walking as walking had never been.  What the sword cuts off, the Savior of life re-creates.  Lepers are cleansed; the incurable cancer of its day, cured beyond all measure.  The AIDS of its day brought low and stamped out by the Creator of all time.

The dead are raised to life.  Could there be any other metaphor for what Jesus does for each of us.  Not just at the end of all time, but now while we live and are dead in our sins.  Only Jesus can make life where there is none.  There was no “faith” in the part of the dead that was able to bring them back to life.  There was only life in the Creator that He freely gave to them that caused the dust we return to, to give back its prize to the Creator of all life itself.  Stick that in your hat evolution.  Our Creator restores life that was lost and brings it back once again.  Just as He does with our sins.  Not because of what we do, or even what we believe, but because of what He alone is capable of doing.  When we give ourselves to Jesus, we trade our death for His life, not just in the Judgment, but in our everyday life and battle with the cancer of our sins.  It is no more our battle to fight, but His to win for us, as we let Him win it for us.  We just need to get out of His way.  Submit everything to Him and watch life spring from death.

But more important than all of these miracles was the miracle of having the gospel preached to the poor.  Think about that.  The church was so pleased with itself, so happy with being holy, or at least acting holy, that there was no message of salvation offered to the poor anymore.  Sound familiar?  When all I want is to be seen as holy, I cannot associate myself with the poor, for danger of their sins rubbing off on my spotless reputation.  I hold my own supposed spiritual honor above the needs of the poor.  I consider the needs of my own life, of my family’s lives, above the needs of the poor in spirit, and high in sins.  Those people offend me.  Those rich in sins do not deserve my time in sharing the gospel because I believe they will reject it anyway and only ridicule me for saying anything about it.  True if what I preach are the doctrines only of Nancy Reagan.  But False, if my life reflects a transformation that only His simple, humble love could bring.  If I live His transformation in me, I will not see the poor as rich in sin, but precious in the eyes of my Lord, and therefore precious in my own.  I will not focus on their sin, but on their potential if they too could connect with Jesus the cure for any sin, especially my own.  Not just forgiveness mind you, but the cure for sin itself.  The poor need less of my imperfect sermons, and more of my tangible examples of His love passed through me.  In meeting their needs and truly loving them, I preach His gospel without ever uttering a word.

And now we circle back to the proclamation of Jesus that is too often lost in the miracles cited above.  Blessed is he, who is not offended in Me.  When we look at Jesus as John must have, and see that our God does not do what we think He should be doing, are we willing to submit or to be offended by it?  When we see the behavior of Jesus on Sabbath days, or in His diet, are we willing to submit, or be offended.  When He serves instead of allowing Himself to be served, or become an earthly King.  Do we submit, or take offense?  And at the core of our salvation, when Jesus asks us to take self out of the way, instead submitting everything we are to Him, in order to be recreated.  Do we submit, or does our pride take offense to be asked to give it all up?  It was love for others that drives Jesus to keep the company of Mary Magdalene a prostitute who was possessed by demons on more than one occasion.  Christ be praised Mary became a former prostitute.  And she earned a special place in His church when she was the first to be commissioned to take the gospel to the disciples who would mostly reject what she said for unbelief.  Jesus made a prostitute into an evangelist in a time when women were worth nothing.

And I wonder, would I welcome a former prostitute into my own church.  Let alone a current one.  And how, if I keep them at arm’s length will they ever hear the gospel message of Jesus Christ, that can turn somebody in that profession into an effective evangelist if they only come to know Him.  It was not only Mary that Jesus made an evangelist.  It was also the woman at the well in Samaria.  She too spread his gospel to the entire region.  She too had a few too many husbands and was living in sin with the man of her choice at that time.  She too was broken by sin, but transformed by an encounter with Jesus.  She too was poor.  If not for Jesus, would she have ever heard the gospel or met its maker.  The transformed heart welcomes the broken into fellowship inside the church and out.  The transformed heart shows simple, humble love to those who need it most, and judgment to none.  Re-created hearts do not fear the Judgment any longer, for they are in harmony with the heart of God Himself.  When we are in harmony with the law, we do not fear the law, for we keep it all the time, not only in deed, but in motive and intent.

Good deeds are no longer forced in our will as an inconvenience.  They are done in countless thousands of things we no longer even think about doing, not considering them deeds at all, just expressions of simple, humble love of Him reflected through us.  If this idea offends you, perhaps it is time to seek true transformation in submission to Jesus Christ.  If this idea encourages you, perhaps your journey has already begun.  I long for the time, when I am able to welcome the current or former prostitute into my church as the sister of Christ she longs to be, and not the partner in sin I might have otherwise made of her.  I long for the time when I am able to welcome her into my home without a single evil intent, and only the pure love of Jesus in my heart.  My journey progresses.  And I only hope its progress is not so slow, I am unable to serve a community in need before my time to share has expired.